While I worked at a VC I ran some analysis on Angel performance and found (for top-tier angels) past performance does in fact predict future performance.
That is if you took the top-tier angels today then the investments that they make over the next year will do disproportionately well compared to other angels.
> That is if you took the top-tier angels today then the investments that they make over the next year will do disproportionately well compared to other angels.
Do you think that has to do with a virtuous cycle, and not say any magic in investment thesis of these angels.
Said differently, because of Ron Conway's position, he gets first pick of all the best deals, which have a higher likelihood of success, because in part they're connected to Ron Conway.
Another thing that kind of builds off of this that I've been thinking about lately after reading sama's blog posts. Do top VC companies that make predictions on the future of big companies shape the outcome of future startups? For example, if all the top VC firms are saying widgets are going to be the biggest thing in the next 10 years, does that cause enough of an influence to create that market and persuade people to go into that field rather than the one they were already intending on?
Most definitely. It's kinda like technical analysis in stock markets - it works because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, people vote with their wallets. At the end of the day consumers don't really know what they want before it's marketed to them, as Steve Jobs has shown time and again.
Perhaps, but the overriding salient point is whether or not you can take the investing "ability" out of the individual performant VC, implant it into a random human being in the developed world, and still predict a performant future for that individual. I mean, obviously it's not lost on anybody that network, means, opportunity, and luck play a big part of the whole picture. But what I'm starting to think is that you could take investing "ability" out of any successful VC, and leave them with their current station (network, means, opportunity, and luck), and they will perform as admirably as before.
That is if you took the top-tier angels today then the investments that they make over the next year will do disproportionately well compared to other angels.